I look at Dot: her wide eyes, her face full of hope and life. She is everything I once was and I can’t leave her here alone.
I’m still holding the brush, my hand white-knuckled around it. Dot follows my gaze. ‘You could help me paint?’ she suggests softly.
My head aches. ‘I’d like that.’
As I follow her into the chapel, I can see Cesare and the other prisoners watching us. I can feel the guard’s eyes on us – I don’t know him. I don’t know what he’s thinking, what he might be planning. My breath balloons in my chest, my legs tingle with the urge to run.
I can’t leave her here.
I force myself to follow Dot. I force myself to copy her movements, dipping my brush into the brown pigment and lifting it to the wall. She shows me how to paint the centre of each tile dark brown, and then to make the outside paler. She shows me how to use white paint at the edges of each tile.
‘It’ll give the illusion of light, from a distance,’ she says confidently.
I glance sideways at her, my sister, the other half of myself, as she speaks in a voice I don’t recognize, telling me things I don’t know, and for a moment, I feel a surge of bitterness at the way these prisoners have pulled us apart. But I also know that the separation started long before they arrived. It started after Angus held me down on the beach and I wouldn’t tell Dot the truth. Or perhaps it started before that. Perhaps it started the night our parents left and I blamed myself. And she blamed me too, I’m sure of it.
My hand trembles and my brush blotches the paint. ‘It’s all my fault,’ I whisper.
Dot pauses in her painting. ‘Oh, don’t worry about mistakes,’ she says brightly. ‘It can all be corrected. See?’ And she takes her brush and paints out the blurry smudge, before going back to her own tile and running a dark streak across it.
‘You try,’ she says.
Carefully, my hand still shaking, I paint over the ugly brown line, blending it into the surrounding tile, so that no one would ever know there had been a mistake at all.
‘Now stand back from it,’ Dot says.
I step back three paces and look at the wall, which is simply flat plasterboard. But from a distance, each painted tile looks real, as though it is part of some living, breathing building.
Behind us, Cesare and the other two men give a small round of applause and I can feel myself beginning to smile. I can feel some tension inside me loosening, as though a hand that has grasped me for so long is finally releasing its grip.
July 1942Dorothy
Usually, July would be a time for working on the land and at sea. There are fish to be caught and salted; there are blocks of peat to be cut and dried out, ready for burning in the winter. But this year, there is a constant supply of food, sent from the south for the prisoners, who are happy to share with us.
The barriers are coming on fast: huge cages full of rocks act as stepping stones between the islands now, and the prisoners are busy tipping more rocks into the gaps. The sea roars between these spaces and the currents around the islands are unrecognizable, dragging everything far out to sea.
The chapel, too, is nearly finished. Major Bates lets the men scavenge scraps of metal from the ships lying in the bay. Cesare wants real tiles for the chapel floor and I have started to go with him, helping to lever up the tiles from the head in one of the half-sunk ships.
Con watches me leave from the chapel doorway, her face anxious. ‘Come back before the tide turns.’
‘Of course.’
As Cesare sets off towards the shoreline, I glance back over my shoulder at Con. She looks thin and pale-faced, but she lifts her hand and waves.
The chapel is more than just a building for all of us. Somehow, it’s a bridge. Somehow, it’s an outstretched hand.
The land is brash with new growth. The wind buffets the grass and the tiny petals of the sea pinks; bees buzz drunkenly from flower to flower, the hum of their wings lost in the hushing whisper of the sea. From the rain-softened earth, the damp smell of life pulses.
Cesare walks ahead of me, turning back occasionally to smile. We have been on this journey twice before, and we know there is no time to linger.
The nearest ship is the easiest to reach: it is only partially submerged, its raw metal skeleton rising skywards from the water, while some of it rests on bare mud during a low tide. But it is so close to the shoreline that is has been almost completely stripped; the ship beyond it is the one that contains the real treasure.
The sea is cold around my legs as I wade out, gathering my skirt in one hand and lifting it clear of the water. Cesare’s trousers are rolled above his knees, but the material on his thighs soon darkens. I watch the water creeping up his legs, laughing when he gasps at the chill.
‘You are cruel,’ he says. ‘This sea is cruel. It wants to kill me with cold because it did not drown me.’
I laugh, but it feels strained. ‘You shouldn’t jump into the sea if you can’t swim.’
‘You will teach me to swim,’ he says. ‘And I will not need to be frightened of the sea.’ He reaches out for the lowered side of the sunken ship and pulls himself up, then holds out a hand for me.
‘Everyone should
